New ModDB page for Oblivionauts!

A new ModDB page has been created for Oblivionauts! On it are new details and art for our upcoming Skyrim modding Project. Please feel free to check it out, read about it, visit our links, see our concepts, and let us know what you think!

ModDB page

Wiki:

In addition, we have a wiki that we are using to develop the mod and store information. When the mod is released, it will also act as the main website for Oblivionauts. If you want to learn more about the mod's details, you can visit it at the link below. The hidden Development section contains the majority of our details for now. When pages are finalized, then they will be moved out of the hidden section. Please keep in mind as you view the wiki, that it is everything on there is subject to change, and not everything is visible to non-developers.

Wiki

Oblivionauts Cover Art

Cover art for our next modding project Oblivionauts has been released! Click to download!

Details on our upcoming project will be released publicly soon. Make sure and check back here or subscribe to this blog to receive any new updates we post. You can also follow us on Twitter or Google+.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Woverdude
Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/113795600799397866390/113795600799397866390/posts

Winter Break Modding Project

I'm thinking about working on a Skyrim modding project over winter break. Unlike my previous projects, this one would involve storytelling and quests rather than gameplay recoding. Are there any of y'all that would be interested in working with me for a few weeks between semesters to create an interesting and unique modification to Skyrim? I am looking for people with any of the following skills:

Story/quest writing
Character design
Art/3d-modeling
Programming
Level design
Voice Acting
Fictional worldbuilding
Game testing

The concept for the project has already been developed some, but I would like input while developing the rest of it and help with creating the actual mod. For those of you who have played Skyrim but do not have a PC copy, I may consider PAYING to get you a copy of the game for your PC.

Obviously, you will need to have a PC capable of running the game if you are going to work on the coding, modeling, or level design. You would also need to be willing to work with me and any others on the team, as well as be able to devote some time each week during the break to the project.

If you are interested, then please message me and I can give you more details on the project. I can guarantee that you will find plenty of interesting work if you do join. :-)

Once the project is complete then it would be released for free online for players to download. A donation link would be available for fans, and any donations would be split with you.

If you are interested in my previous modding work, you can check out the following pages:

Skyrim Nexus: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/users/1266423
Steam Workshop: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198008458024/myworkshopfiles
Modding Blog: http://tesmods.blogspot.com/


My mods have been downloaded over 40,000 people and viewed by likely 300,000.

EBM WIP: plans for EBM v2

Due to real world life I was not able to post any update about EBM for months, neither could I work on the mod, not even could I play Skyrim! (how bad is that!?) But I kept on thinking and planning what should be done for the v2... Overall I plan to redo everything in way to get the mod as clean as possible. And I think the library it should feature might be nicknamed "Little Apocrypha".

What EBMv2 should contain

• More new books
• Books from the previous games, from Arena to Oblivion (yes!)
• A giant secret library to sort and store all those books in several samples
• Bibliographies listing books related to a same topic (ex: Dwemers) and where to find them in the library, and possibly compendiums with excerpts related to a given topic
• (optional) retextured assets to serve as signs to find your way in the library
• (optional) more textures for book covers (including mere color variations)

Workflow

1. Listing and sorting all the books in categories and sub-categories
2. Planning the spatial organization of the library
3. Building and testing the library cells
4. Adding, placing and compiling all the new books
5. Test, fixing, test, fixing...
6. Release

What's being done currently
[update] I finished listing and sorting the books, basing me on the Imperial Library. So far I have listed 331 titles (not books but titles of one-shots and series) and 197 of those titles are yet in Skyrim though some series (like the Wolf Queen) are incomplete. However I didn't include books we aren't supposed to find (such as the Mysterium Xarxes, diaries and other quest-related books). This makes yet around 200 books to format and implement and some include pictures.
I tag the books with keywords about their content that will help for bibliographies, and assign them to fitting categories which are divided into:

• Physics:
• History (various eras)
• Geopolitics (Nirn, Imperial Provinces, Guilds & Factions)
• Fauna & Flora (races, creatures, plants, minerals)
• Arts & Crafts (literature, smithing, cooking, etc.)

• Metaphysics:
• Monomyth
• Aedra
• Daedra (Princes, Lorkhan, Oblivion)
• Cults (Orders, consequences of their deeds on Nirn)
• Myths & Legends
• Arcane Arts (magic of all schools and kinds)
• Pain & Care (diseases, curses, etc.)

The goal of this sorting is to plan properly the level building of the library.



How to help
As you guess many books will fall into many categories but this way I hope to make the place as handy as possible for players who like to play scholars. I don't know how many there are but surely more than I think.
And of course, any help in the sorting and tagging would be very helpful, or if you've already created information compendiums or so, it would surely be very fitting.

If someone wishes to do some retexturing I'd be very interested as well. For book covers of course, something based on the Book of the Dragonborn or Spell Tomes could be nice since those book feature a different textures for back and front covers, allowing to differentiate them more. But also for some assets such as banners and rugs that would be used as signs for the different parts of the library.

If you have ideas and suggestions, they're also very welcomed of course.

EBM Update: 25 and 28-4-12

This is very good news for the next update of EBM my friends! I've managed to contact Michael Kirkbride to ask if he would authorize the implementation of the books he wrote for previous TES games in Skryim and I just got his answer! Short and straigth to the point as usual! =D

I've also sent a message to Ted Peterson, I hope he'll answer...! (I'm so happy...!)
[update] I just got his answer and these are good news again! (I am so very happy...!) It's gonna be some work to format all those books, I've already done a good 20 of them and there are many more to go. With just the Lessons of Vivec we'll be over 50 in no time. Goodness... EBM will become the must have for book collectors...! =D

Now I can say that I have plans for the future of EBM. In a first step I'll complete the library of Mzahndarhk and give access to the unaccessible areas of the ruin.
The quest related to the place will only come later, hopefully. It is a very ambitious project with complex events that would require a lot of time and skill sets... But would promise a lot of fun and epic!

So in a second step I would rather give a try to quest design with two possible mods:

• One that would alter the way you learn spells. Spell tomes wouldn't add a new spell, they would give you a new quest and it's only as you fulfill it that you can learn the spell, train at casting it and master it.
• The other would be a new faction, the School of Julianos, to serve the divine by educating the masses, retrieving books for the school and for people.

But for now I'm overbooked until June the 15th, working on a small video game due by then. I really need to focus on my energy on this project so that's why I'm much less active currently.

Way Of The Monk - Part 1 Released!

Part 1 of the Way Of The Monk Skyrim mod has been released on the Nexus! You can visit this page to download. If you enjoy it, please feel free to endorse or spread the word if you enjoy it. :-)

Unfortunately I was not able to upload the mod to the Workshop. The Workshop has a file size that my mod exceeded and would not allow me to upload it.

And Bethesda's big announcement is... Kinect?

Bethesda's developers and blog have recently been hinting at big news to be revealed in April. Well, that announcement seems to have been made today. But it is probably not what most of us were thinking it would be...

Having discussed the Tweets and blog posts of Bethesda's with other Elder Scrolls fans, I know what most of us were expecting. A DLC announcement, new Game Jam content, Elder Scrolls Online, something of that sort. But Kinect? Many of us already knew that Kinect support was available or about to be because of a video on Youtube that showed Bethesda developers using Kinect to play Skyrim. But that this would be the great big April reveal, most of us did not consider.

Personally, I'm unsure about this new Kinect option. Would it really be any better than normal gameplay, or would it cause more annoyance than enjoyment? I've never used a Kinect, so I'm not sure. The Kinect could greatly improve Skyrim's gameplay, especially since it would eradicate a lot of hotkey problems. If you're a Kinect owner or player, do you think that Skyrim would play well on the it? 

What do you think?

What do you think about this announcement? Was it as exciting as you thought it would be? Would you rather that they announced a new DLC or similar content? Will you play Skyrim on the Kinect? Do you think that this was a wise use of Bethesda's time and funding?

Need A Dev Blog For Your Mod?

Need a development blog for your mod? Want a place to post Creation Kit tutorials or Skyrim news?

One of the original intents when nox.fox and Woverdude created this blog was to open it up to the larger Skyrim modding community. Updates for upcoming mods, new project announcements, modding tutorials, general Elder Scrolls news, we'd like to see all of it. If you have want to write about any of those topics, and are dedicated to your work and writing, then please contact us and if we accept your request then we will give you posting privileges.

Conditions:

• Prove to us that you are dedicated to your mod. We need to know that you will complete your mod, rather than wandering off to another project. The last thing we want is for a modder to stir up excitement about their great new mod, only to disappoint by not delivering.
• Don't stay out of contact with us for more than 15 days. "contact" means anything from commenting on a post, to e-mail, to posting on a forum that we will see. We just need to make sure that you wont disappear.
• Post at least one tutorial a month.
• Be easy to work with for us and our readers. 
• Write interesting, entertaining, and informational posts. If you need help with your writing, feel free to contact one of us and we can give you tips.
• Your mod MUST be for Elder Scrolls related. No mod for a game outside of the ES series by Bethesda will be allowed.

Benefits:

• As a poster, you will be allowed to post updates or news regarding Skyrim and Skyrim modding.
• As a poster, you will be part of a larger community with an established reader base and other dedicated modders.
• As a poster, if you need help with your mod, then you can write a post on the blog asking for help from other modders.
• As a reader, you will be able to keep updated about Skyrim, as well as your favorite Skyrim mods.
• As a modder, you can find and request detailed, informational tutorials for the Creation Kit.

Advertising: 

We are also going to add advertisements to the website. They are going to be placed as unobtrusively as possible and will be restricted to gaming-related ads. So far we've managed to get between 200-300 views per day, which is pretty high for only being online for a month or two.

We understand that advertisements can be annoying. Please keep in mind, though, that we are spending many hours working on mods and this blog. All of those hours are unpayed. We are also both unemployed and in school. Any extra cash that we get means we can spend more hours working on mods, since we have to spend less time working or looking for a job. Though they may be a bit of a nuisance, they will allow us to run this website and build our mods.